I'm just starting my PBX journey

General Help
1

Please let me know if I chose the wrong forum to post these kinds of questions:

  1. I have a very small home based business and will probably never have more than 5 extensions. I am looking for a decent home PBX to go with the Yeahlink IP phones I just bought. Can you guys recommend your favorite home PBX hardware device? I have searched on ebay and found a few that cost under $500, but unlike amazon.com, there are no reviews for these devices. I don’t know which would would be a quality device vs. one that is a lemon. Some that I’ve seen include the Zycoo, myPBX, plugPBX, NanoPBX, SpoTel Mini, voiSip 2060, iCallDroid.

  2. Whichever device I end up buying, will I need a static IP address issued from Comcast?

  3. Do all PBXs require dialing a 9 before getting an outside line? Not only will this phone system be for our business, but I’m going to integrate our home phone number into it.

Thanks!!

2

You don’t need a static IP.

You also don’t need any of those expensive machines. FreePBX runs on almost anything. You can get a Rasberry PI solid state machine for under $100. Little Intel Atom boxes also make great home PBX’s.

The dial plan is completely up to you.

3

But a plugPBX or similar solid state machine will not include a analog phone jack so I can use an existing cordless phone….right?

4

Use an ata to interface. You can pick up a Cisco PAP2 2 line box for less than 30 bucks on ebay. For your external connection use sip trunking, Sipstation is a good bet. Have a look in the store on this site.

You can pretty much do what you like with dialing, use a nine or just dial a number FBX/Asterisk is very versatile.

5

There is plenty of discussion here about low cost boxes to run FreePBX systems on: http://www.pbxinaflash.com/community/index.php?threads/diy-piaf2-server-200.12460/page-7. You will need to download the FreePBX ISO and install this yourself. Some of the Foxconn boxes look very good as small PBX systems (especially when used with a SSD).

You don’t need a static IP address for a small office IP PBX.